


The Most Beautiful Man in the Universe Lives in my Building

by Dreamy_Ideal



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, M/M, Meet-Cute, Slice of Life, a series of meet-cutes, or meet-disasters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 00:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20497793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamy_Ideal/pseuds/Dreamy_Ideal
Summary: and Yixing only ever sees him when he is a complete mess





	The Most Beautiful Man in the Universe Lives in my Building

**Author's Note:**

> this is based off of one of my favorite tumblr posts and has been sitting in my drafts for at least a year and I’m so happy to have it out. thanks to my friend once again for helping me get unstuck with this. also thank you to whoever messaged me about this on tumblr and convinced me to pull this out of my drafts and try to finish it.

Yixing didn’t know what he’d done to have his luck abandon him, but he figured that it had to be pretty significant for it to betray him in this way.

He was usually a pretty lucky guy! Yes, he worked hard and ceaselessly and credited a lot of his achievements to that hard work, but he wouldn’t deny the huge role luck played in his life. 

So he couldn’t understand where his luck went to in the one moment that he most wanted it—

Not even the full power of his luck, just a pinch of it—

He just did not understand how in the world, right when he laid his eyes on the most beautiful man he had ever seen in his life, how in the world he ended up standing in front of that man with the front of his shirt covered in pasta sauce.

And had a piece of garlic bread hanging out of his mouth.

A piece of garlic bread that he lost his grip on when he met the dark eyes of the stranger in front of him. A piece of garlic bread that fell to the floor of the elevator with a clatter that was deafening in comparison to the utter silence around him. He couldn’t hear himself breathe—maybe his lungs went to wherever his luck had gotten off to in that moment.

And to top things off, just so the universe could get a good chuckle at his expense, the elevator doors did not shut right away. No, they lingered open, giving the gorgeous man an opportunity to drag his eyes down and back up Yixing’s hot saucy mess of a front. They met eyes again, and the doors stayed open just long enough for Yixing to watch the man turn his head and walk back off down the hall. They probably would have stayed open longer to spite him but as soon as the man was out of his eyeline, Yixing regained his ability to move and ran his hand down the whole column of floor buttons just to get those traitorous doors to shut and end his embarrassment.

Quite possibly the most attractive man on the planet stood in front of him and all Yixing had to offer was an ode to pasta.

Sehun wasn’t sympathetic in the least when he told him the story during their lunch break at work the next day, reminded of the disastrous event by Sehun’s choice of lasagna from the cafeteria. 

“The most attractive man on the planet?” Sehun asked through his fits of laughter.

Yixing remembered the moment those warm, perfect eyes met his.

“Universe.”

“Say again?”

“The most attractive man in the universe.”

Sehun let out another laugh at his expense. Yixing didn’t fuss at him about it, all of his energy going towards feeling like he could kick his own ass. He lowered his head to the table top as he sighed. He couldn’t remember the last time he was that embarrassed by something. The laughter soon stopped but Yixing’s sulking held up strong.

“Don’t worry, Yixing,” Sehun said in a voice that betrayed at least a little bit of concern, “beautiful men are everywhere. You’ll find another one or two before the week is over and forget all of this.”

Yixing picked his head up after a moment and nodded. Sehun was right. Yixing couldn’t remember a more embarrassing incident in his past because he forgot about them all. Eventually it would happen again, and the event, along with the most beautiful man in the universe, would be pushed to the back of his mind and forgotten, lost among all of his other day to day worries.

“So do you want some of my lasagna? Or is it too soon?” Yixing balled up a napkin to throw at him. “Too soon, I get it.”

——-

Yixing didn’t know how it happened to him _again_. He was beginning to think that the problem wasn’t with his luck, but that he’d managed to piss off the universe somehow. Twice. _Twice._ For the second time in his life he found himself face to face with the most beautiful man in existence. And for the second time he was in front of that enticing gaze while he was the hottest mess he could possibly be. 

The wettest mess that he could possibly be.

The hottest, wettest, most mud and he didn’t even want to think about what else covered mess that he could ever aspire to be.

Meanwhile, standing on the sidewalk in front of Yixing’s apartment building, the man looked less like he got caught in the rain without an umbrella and more like he walked right out of the stars, hair glittering with stardust instead of water.

The man’s unbearably gorgeous eyes looked up from Yixing’s and to the top of his head.

“There’s a stick in your hair.”

Of course the most beautiful man in the universe had the most amazing voice to match. And of course Yixing had a stick in his hair. He was surprised it wasn’t a whole tree branch with a bird on it. Yixing wished there was a bird on it, that way he could have convinced it to pick Yixing up and fly him away somewhere else, anywhere else.

Sehun was a little bit more sympathetic when Yixing recapped the event while they waited for coffee together the following day. The increase in sympathy was probably due to Yixing telling the whole story while his head was down on the table. “So, what did you say?”

“I couldn’t say anything. Someone opened the building door and Yoshi dragged me inside like he dragged me through the park during his walk.”

Yixing sighed heavily. He was a decent person, how did he end up in front of that man twice at his very worst?

“This isn’t that bad,” Sehun said as he rubbed his back.

It was that bad. Yixing could only hope that this incident put him back on good terms with the universe and put his luck back into place so he wouldn’t have to see the man for a third time.

\--

“Good evening again, Mr. Zhang. Isn’t it a little late to do laundry?”

“Not at all,” Yixing said to Yugyeom as he passed by the lobby desk for the second time that night. “One in the morning is the perfect time to do laundry! No wait for any of the machines. No chance that anyone will have to look at my wet underwear.”

Besides, he was still buzzed from the company gathering earlier that evening so he decided he might as well attend to his least favorite chore while he was in an agreeable enough mood to do it. Also, he was pretty sure he was out of clean socks. And t-shirts. And sweatpants. Yixing couldn’t actually remember the last time he bothered with his laundry.

Even more of a bonus for doing his laundry in the middle of the night: he could take up multiple machines at once and no one would make a fuss. He skipped the one machine that still had clothes in it and filled up three of the other machines around it. He then took advantage of the emptiness of the room to strip out of the clothes he wore that night down to his boxers, covering up with the robe he brought.

Not wanting to go all the way back up to his apartment just to walk back down, Yixing camped out in the laundry room, taking the time to go over all the videos and pictures the company gathering. Yixing always had an okay enough time at them, since they only had them every so often and no one from upper management came to make them uncomfortable, but he was a little disappointed that they had yet to go out for karaoke.

Yixing was craving a good karaoke night. He was going to have to go out one night with his friends. He started to send a rare message to the group chat until he remembered what time it was. Yixing backed out of it, going to YouTube instead to make a karaoke playlist.

Somewhere around the rinse cycle, Yixing finished the playlist and switched to listening through it. Listening to it quickly turned into singing along with it, serenading the machines as he danced around the laundry room. A+ playlist without a doubt. Whitney Houston came on at just the right time.

Yixing had to sing louder to give ‘I wanna dance with somebody’ the appreciation it deserved after the washing machines hit the spin cycle. It would have been nice to have someone to dance with at that moment but Yixing had to settle for picking up his half full bottle of laundry detergent and spinning around with it a few times before holding it up and singing into the top of it like a microphone.

“Don’t you want to dance, with me baby? Don’t you want to da—”

Whitney continued to sing on by herself after Yixing almost jumped out of his skin. When he turned around to face the door, he saw someone standing right in front of it, clutching a basket and looking at Yixing, eyes wide behind their glasses.

“You sc—” The rest of Yixing’s declaration caught in his throat when he realized who he was looking at.

In that moment, Yixing was certain that it wasn’t his luck that had given up on him over the past few months, nor the universe trying to balance out all the good luck he had over the years with a nice helping of bad luck. No, in that moment, Yixing knew that it was a deity that he had angered looking to get their revenge on him.

But apparently whatever deity was getting their laughs at his expense had just been taking a short break and was back to resume torture. And Yixing’s good luck couldn’t compete against it.

Because there he was, the most beautiful man in the universe, standing in his laundry room. Watching Yixing dance around in his half open rubber duck print robe while he sang along to Whitney Houston.

Unlike in the past encounters, the man was quick to take his eyes off Yixing, dropping his head down as he walked around the table near the washing machines. Yixing watched out of the corner of his eye as the man placed his basket on the table. Yixing turned his head a little bit and in doing so met those gorgeous eyes again.

Yixing could have sworn he saw the start of a smile on the man’s (beautiful, gorgeous, potentially very soft) lips and that was enough to send Yixing scurrying out of the laundry room without a backwards glance. He didn’t even realize he'd left his phone behind until he made it to his apartment and had nothing to place against the card reader to unlock the door. He jabbed in the backup pin code into his keypad instead, then collapsed on the couch.

He sat up a minute later so he could grab his laptop. When he powered it up, twitter was the first thing he saw.

_the most beautiful man in the universe lives in my building and i only ever see him when i’m a mess_

_i have to move out :((( who’s free next weekend?_

Before he had any chance to scroll through his timeline to find something to distract himself with, he got a notification.

_**you’re not moving out we just moved you in**_ Sehun, who he was surprised was still up after how much he drank at the company event. _**what happened this time**_

** __ ** _caught me dancing in my underwear_

_ **uh how???** _

** __ ** _i was in the laundry room waiting for my clothes i didn’t think anyone would be there this late! i wanted to do karaoke _

_ **what were you singing?** _

** __ ** _i wanna dance with somebody_

_ **that was a perfectly good meet-cute! what did he say?** _

** __ ** _I ran away :(((_

After Sehun replied with a series of facepalm emojis, Yixing turned his attention to a reply from Chanyeol asking what was going on.

**yea you might need to move out D:**

**of the country D:**

Yixing closed his laptop. Chanyeol was right, he was going to have to move out of the country. But with the way things were turning out, the first thing he would see after getting off the plane would be the most beautiful man in the universe, probably trying to get away from him.

The first thing he did when he woke up the next morning was try to convince him that the laundry room incident was a bad dream. Failing to do that, he dug into his closet and found a hoodie and pair of jeans he could wear instead of his robe so he could go and get his laundry.

“Mr. Zhang, hey, I have you phone!”

As he passed by the lobby desk, Yugyeom called out to him. Yixing took the device that was sitting on the counter, thanking Yugyeom as he did. Continuing towards the laundry room, Yixing tapped the screen to see if he missed any messages.

Instead of messages what caught Yixing’s attention were twitter notifications. A lot of them. Yixing wondered if one of his tweets went viral, but as he thought about it, he couldn’t think of anything that would be viral worthy. Yixing pressed the group of notifications.

**Liked by oshean**

** __ ** _maybe you should consider putting a passcode on your phone. from: the most beautiful man in the universe that lives in your building_

Never mind out of the country, he was going to have to move off the planet.

**Liked by oshean:**

_also I’m pretty average, if that helps anything_

**oshean replied:**

** _are you the most beautiful man in the universe?_ **

**Liked by oshean:**

** __ ** _if that’s what he thinks, sure_

**Loeloey replied:**

**just so you know he’s pretty cool and this is what he normally looks like**

Yixing was going to have to move into another solar system—but not before kicking Chanyeol into another one. He suppressed a wail that wanted to get out of him as he shoved his phone into his back pocket. He quickly pulled it back out after a thought crossed his mind.

“Ma? Do we have a family curse? Ah, so we actually might. Or I might.”

—

It took a few weeks for Yixing to give up on moving out of his apartment. As time wore on, the embarrassment he felt dulled down a bit, which helped him reconsider. Also helpful was a good assessment of his bank account and his credit, which reminded him he needed to count himself lucky to have his current apartment.

He did make a point to not be anywhere in the building besides his apartment for too long though, startling the attendants as he ran in and out every day and making use of Chanyeol’s apartment to do his laundry. After a month without running into the other man, it seemed like whatever deity was after him or curse that was over him finally decided to let up and allow him to live in peace.

_Getting coffee before work, I’m taking orders._

Yixing heard the ding of the elevator reaching his floor. He politely gestured to the auntie inside to continue on her way down. Yixing wanted to send the orders to the coffee shop before he started on his way and he knew that he would lose his signal as soon as he stepped inside. On top of that, the elevator liked to take its time some days, and it would be just his luck that it would take him an hour to get downstairs that morning.

As soon as he deciphered Sehun’s typo filled, minimally spaced request and put in their orders, Yixing jabbed at the elevator button again. He sighed. A few more weeks and he’d get to go on vacation, go visit his mom and see his cousins and let his grandmother talk his ear off about marriage.

He shuffled to the back of the elevator when it arrived, leaning against the corner. His mind wandered as the elevator lurched towards the first floor. Yixing wasn’t looking forward to the departmental meeting that morning. He was looking forward to getting home that evening and getting dinner. Maybe he would order chicken, or go to that Japanese restaurant—

Or maybe he would never eat again because he would die right where he stood.

Because the elevator stopped and the doors opened to reveal the most beautiful man in the universe. 

And Yixing remembered that he was perfectly aware that Yixing thought he was the most beautiful man in the universe.

If luck was on his side, the elevator line would snap exactly that second.

“I’ll call you back when I get to school.”

He sounded like he just woke up. It made his heart race. They locked eyes and Yixing stood up straight and looked at the floor. He heard the man walk into the elevator. The silence that followed after the doors shut was deafening. He was sorely tempted to get off at the next floor and take the stairs the rest of the way but that would mean bringing more attention to himself and he already felt like he would burn up so much that he would melt into the floor—

“I was in theater when I was in high school, and on the opening night of my first leading role I puked on stage.”

Yixing looked up at the back of the man’s head. “I wasn’t nervous, but I was so sick that day. But I was lead. I thought I could power through it. Made it through my first line but then—” The man turned around to look at him over his shoulder. He held up his hand in front of his mouth and made a spraying motion. “Projectile vomit, all over my classmate. Twice. Definitely packed my bags to leave town.”

His lips pulled into a smile. He had such a light up the room smile. And he was talking directly to Yixing. And not insulting him or calling him out for the embarrassment that he was. 

“That’s just to make even. Since you want to move out. A story about when I was embarrassed so bad I left town seemed fair.”

Yixing couldn’t say whether or not it was fair. Couldn’t really say anything at all, still caught off guard by the situation. The man turned around to face the elevator doors again. They slid open a few moments later. He walked out before turning to face Yixing again.

“And I like Whitney Houston. And Karaoke. Just throwing that out there. You have my number. Also, your fly is down.”

“Forget the coffee.” Sehun finally took his coffee that Yixing tried to give him while he was telling him about that morning but he immediately set it away on his desk. “You got his number?”

Yixing shook his head. Sehun looked as confused as he felt. “He left after that. That was the first time that he really spoke to me.”

Sehun turned to look at his computer screen, his eyebrows furrowed in thought. Yixing left to drop off the rest of his coworkers’ coffee. When he returned to his desk, Sehun grabbed the back of Yixing’s chair and pulled him.

“What if,” he started as he leaned close to Yixing, “when you left your phone in the laundry room, he put his number in?”

Yixing hurried to grab his phone and scroll through his contacts. _The pretty average guy that lives in your building._

He was anxious to get home all day but when he finally got there, he was hesitant to dial the number. Yixing felt something would go wrong. Maybe the man put in his number wrong on accident and Yixing would end up talking to someone else that sounded vaguely like the man, and the stranger would string Yixing along and convince Yixing to meet them, and after Yixing met them and felt the embarrassment of talking to the wrong person the whole time—

Yixing dialed the number before he could think any more about the worst case scenario. He held his breath as the phone rang.

“Hello?”

It sounded like the man. Yixing bit the corner of his lip. “Is that theater story true?” The man chuckled.

“It is. I tell it to my students every year as an ice breaker. I don’t usually tell it to get a date but you didn’t respond to any of the meet-cutes, so I had to try something different.”

A date. The most beautiful man in the universe was suggesting they go on a date. He was also suggesting that all of their previous encounters were meet-cutes. 

“We haven’t had any meet-cutes.”

“All we’ve had are meet-cutes,” the man said. “Or we could have, if you weren’t such a good sprinter.”

Yixing sighed. His stubbornness helped him to relax a little bit. “You and Sehun. Meet-cutes are when people are charming and actually look cute and—”

“You’re cute, and I was charmed. But there’s only so many meet-cutes a person can take. And at some point you’re going to ruin all of your clothes.”

Yixing closed his eyes as he started to see some of the humor in the situation. It would probably take a little while for the sting of embarrassment to completely fade but at least he was talking to the most beau—

“What is your name?”

“Kyungsoo.”

At least he was talking to Kyungsoo.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](http://twitter.com/xingofheart/) come talk to me about xingsoo's first date karaoke playlist


End file.
